HAHAHA, oh god, Willem. That was perfect. Now I have to come up with a response that isn't littered with fan-giggles and references to my mad celebrity crush on Tom Hiddleson, don't I?

I guess, in a way, it brings to mind the uncomfortable feeling I get when someone tells me everything is in God's hands. Like it somehow absolves people of their responsibilities to actively work towards a change. Why should they try to change society when society has already shaped them into what they are? Bucking the system just causes problems and strife, right?

It makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to give people the message that we can't change. We can change. We ARE society (which makes this admittedly better than saying everything is in God's hands, at least). Yes, society does effect us in a very profound way... but it seems a bit defeatist to say nobody ever knows what they want. Like it's a negative message when we could be making a positive one instead.

Anyway, I meant to include that I think this is a fine idea for a topic. It's certainly going to continue to be relevant for a long time to come. Our liberal democracy still has some spreading of liberties to do._________________"Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid" ~ SGT John Stryker from "Sands of Iwo Jima".

I don't pretend to have done huge amounts of reading on feminism, but my understanding is that most U.S. Citizens fall comfortably into the classification of "equity Feminist" whether they define themselves as feminists or not. In other words they believe that women and men should be treated the same and everyone should be nice to each other and be allowed to pursue their happiness, etc. Yes giant oversimplification, but the bottom line is equity feminists were so successful in their efforts that ideas that were once fairly radical aren't even associated with the ideology anymore. They're simply normal.

There are fringe groups and some of their members actually believe the bile they spew, but they generally aren't taken any more seriously than flat earthers.

I like your optimism, but I'm afraid you're wrong. I agree that feminists have been successful in shifting the narrative in the US so that outright, heavy misogyny and the really insidious stuff was pushed into the shadows. However, this means that it's solved as much as race issues are solved - not at all. This isn't exclusive to the US, either. The problem is that people are willing to make superficial changes which don't actually do much - it's okay as long as they don't have to change themselves. But that's where the main problem lies. And I'm not only talking about republicans/conservatives here - even liberals are part of this. So while major steps have been made, the road is long still and to call most of America feminist is just utterly wrong.

semi-edit: I just checked out the term 'equity feminism' and I see that it originated with Christina Hoff Sommers. Ugh, I get angry just reading that wiki article. Fuck that term. Christ. Sommers basically came along and dismissed a huge portion of feminist thought as 'gender feminism [which is] a gynocentric and misandric branch of feminism.' She's basically playing the 'we're the good ones, unlike those people' card. No surprises in that she's a libertarian socially conservative. Ugh. Fuck fuck fuck.

So maybe the majority of the US is an 'equity feminist' but that's a meaningless term made up by a socially conservative libertarian and is actually not even close to Actual Feminism. Don't be one of those people.

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words about evopsych

Problem is that a lot of evopsych and all of it that reaches the public is bullshit. Especially when it's put forth in the media without the proper background knowledge or context. On its own, within an academic context, it can be useful, but when it's released into the wild it suddenly becomes morphed into - yes - 'a biological "Excuse" for rape'. It's not their intention and it's not what the study means, but scientists have to be aware of how their work impacts the world. They carry a responsibility which they can't just handwave by pointing out the science is good.

Samsally wrote:

I guess, in a way, it brings to mind the uncomfortable feeling I get when someone tells me everything is in God's hands. Like it somehow absolves people of their responsibilities to actively work towards a change. Why should they try to change society when society has already shaped them into what they are? Bucking the system just causes problems and strife, right?

It makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to give people the message that we can't change. We can change. We ARE society (which makes this admittedly better than saying everything is in God's hands, at least). Yes, society does effect us in a very profound way... but it seems a bit defeatist to say nobody ever knows what they want. Like it's a negative message when we could be making a positive one instead.

I think of the thought as extremely liberating, actually. If everything is influenced by such structures, that means that if we identify them, we can change them. You can't change god, but you can change society. And maybe we don't know what we want - or better, we can't know for certain what we want - that shouldn't stop us from trying to improve the world. There is no reality other than this, so why not just run with it and do your best?_________________attitude of a street punk, only cutting selected words out of context to get onself excuse to let one's dirty mouth loose

He's good when it comes to atheism, I guess, but he should stop talking about anything else.

Dawkins is probably one of the biggest, most important evolutionary biologists of our generation. I think you can attribute a bit more to him than his atheism.

Guest wrote:

Yeah, you kind of did shoot your own argument in the foot there. I'm just curious what brought you to this kind of reasoning. It's impossible to know when a woman wants to have sex? Because... what? Elaborate, please.

Willem wrote:

Because of cultural indoctrination - which teaches women that sometimes no means yes, that to make her partner happy she has to do things she doesn't want, etc - a patriarchic society adds a specific extra layer of issues which take away from the meaning of consent. But as you said, there is no way to ever know if your decision is 'your own', even in a non-patriarchy. There's always something that's 'tainting' your agency. But if you were to compare just the patriarchy and the non-patriarchy on this specific issue, you can say that consent in a non-patriarchy would be more meaningful because it doesn't have the issues I mentioned. But it's not perfect either.

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When all your decisions and your very mind are formed by the structures which make up our society, it becomes impossible to know if you'd make the same decision in - say - a non-patriarchy. You'd be fundamentally different if those structures changed. So maybe you'd have sex in this patriarchy because, y'know, he had a rough day, it's been a while since we did it, it's all part of this whole relationship thing, while in a non-patriarchy you wouldn't.

So you're saying that women are coerced one way or the other to have sex, and not out of their own volition?

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But that doesn't mean that women don't ever want to have sex (that's absurd), it's just that nobody can know for certain in this society. It's unclear if there's consent or not. Is there enough agency for her to make that decision or is this decision being made - essentially - by the patriarchic structure which formed her mind?

Uh huh, and considering that we've lived in essentially patriarchal societies all our lives, there's no way of knowing. So that kind of philosophical argument is totally pointless. The "what if..." scenario.

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The argument Dworkin makes is that no, it is structure and if we break down patriarchy she'd have more agency to make this specific decision.

Her "argument" is an unfounded assertion, with no proof to support it. She might as well say that breaking "the patriarchy" will cause the earth to split open, revealing a crust of fireworks and justice.

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When did I say that one group discredit the entire movement? Are you using the same rhetoric as Dennis now? Broad statements to something I definitely did not say? I said that people like Dworkin and Coulter has/had large followings, who are particularly vocal, and as such hijacked the name. And not just Dworkin and Coulter, others too. I didn't say they discredited the movement as a whole, I merely said that because of these people feminism may not be a word for which some people see favourably. So, I just say I'm a humanist now. No confusion there.

You said that feminism was hijacked, which is utter bullshit. Dworkin and Coulter make up tiny bits of the feminism spectrum. I'm also not buying the whole 'tainted term' thing, because you can hop from name to name like a coward but the connotation will always follow you. If you actually care about feminist goals, you should proudly call yourself a feminist and not buckle the second someone says 'but look at Coulter!'. It's the same as someone going 'but Stalin!' in a conversation about socialism and it's equally stupid.

Look, Willem. I realise you're one to support feminism and I respect that. I just don't personally respect the term 'feminism' anymore. Especially if it's equipped by snakes like Coulter. By calling myself a humanist, I'm just cutting out the middle man.

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Because there are no such things as misandrists? Really, Willem, you need to stop this naive outlook you have on life. It's making me feel old.

In a conversation about feminism and women's rights, it's in incredibly poor taste to talk about 'misandrists'. Aside from it being a weasel-word/dogwhistle much in the same way as welfare queens and States' Rights are, aside from it spawning out of a contrarian tactic of taking feminist terms and childishly reversing them, aside from the fact that I've never seen it used properly, it's laughably meaningless. Here we are, living in a patriarchy, where men are automatically advantaged in nearly every way - where the default is misogyny - and you're going to bring up the fringe of the fringe misandrists like it even deserves to be mentioned in the same conversation as misogyny? No, don't do that.

You need to understand that everything isn't as black and white as you want it to be, and you need to understand that speaking of someone individually does not slander something collectively. My dislike for Dworkin is for her words and her actions, regardless of her feminism. That the feminism should be a smokescreen for her rhetoric is regretable, but they're there, in print.

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Wow. Yeah, you got me there. Slight difference. Never thought you were one for semantics, but there you are. Brilliant. But you may have noticed that she's still calling the seducer a rapist. A rapist who has the decency to buy their victim a bottle of wine.

She's saying that some tactics involved in seduction are comparable to the tactics that rapists use. Don't dismiss this as semantics, because she's saying something entirely different than what you think she's saying. As for examples (I should've said PUA, not MRA, by the way), browse around.

When? When is she saying that? In that quote? No? Entirely different than what I think she's saying in that quote where she's saying it? Where are you getting these interpretations from?

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In which culture, I wonder? Ancient Greece? Rome? Egypt? Or way before that, with our troglodyte ancestors? (Nice callback to the comic.) Unfortunately there is no evidence for neither abduction or capture being commonplace in the Neolithic, apart from cartoons, and none for marriage as far as we know. Of course my history-fu might be lacking. Maybe you have a better grasp on the history of marriage than I do.

I'm not an expert either, but I'm guessing that marriage came into being during the transition from migrating group dynamics to sedentary family units. Suddenly lineage becomes important and the only way for a man to know for sure (or as sure as he can be) is for him to have a woman that's exclusively for him. Taking women wasn't all too uncommon during those days either (I'm sure the Romans and the Jews had some myths about this). And during most of history, in a marriage, the man really did own the woman.

But really, I don't think her argument would stand up to serious historical criticism, but I can see where she's coming from.

Ah huh, but I believe she said marriage "developed from rape as a practice" - there is no basis for that in history. There is no evidence for her assertions, yet you can "see where she's coming from?" *facepalm* I think I'm going to have a fucking meltdown.

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No, I didn't say she was literally talking about killing all men either. Gods you're quick with that double-edged sword of broad statements, aren't you? So if 'manhood' in that statement means 'the patriarchy' (as you so expertly seem to be able to divine her meaning), what's the 'ravaged feminity'?

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She then goes on how women cannot be free until all men are dead

Also, I can 'divine' her meaning because I actually know what I'm talking about. I'm guessing 'ravaged feminity' just means womankind, but it could be something else. Anyway, do you object to this statement now that you know she's only saying that women should overthrow the patriarchy?

No, because that's not actually what she's saying with that quote. Did Dworkin use 'manhood' a lot to mean 'the patriarchy', and did she use 'feminity' or 'ravaged feminity' often to mean the opposite? Oh, and you're 'guessing'? I thought you knew what you were talking about.

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Or akin to handwaving a particularly malicious Bible quote. Now you're just being pathetic, Willem.

This is not an argument. Do you disagree with my interpretation of her quote? If so, why?

Well, that's just it. Interpretation. Your interpretation doesn't exist in the original quote. I've seen this kind of tactic before, from religious followers. But I believe you called them 'dull apologists' so colour me surprised.

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Yeah, I do believe I said that. However, as with most groups, if you acknowledge the one group, you must acknowledge the other, even if it is unsavory. Ann Coulter has apparently done a lot for women's rights, according to many women. Even if you ... disagree.

What? No, you don't. I'm not sure what you mean with acknowledge, but I doubt it's anything good. An anti-porn feminist shouldn't be thrown into the same pile as a pro-porn feminist. Nuance.

Acknowledge their existence. That they're there. That they are present and doing something to further 'the cause', even if they're doing it the wrong way. Even if you disagree.

I said that people like Dworkin and Coulter has/had large followings, who are particularly vocal, and as such hijacked the name. And not just Dworkin and Coulter, others too.

What exactly do you think Coulter and Dworkin have in common? And who, except for people who would otherwise hold a favourable view of Coulter anyway, considers her a "feminist icon"? I wasn't even aware she tried to claim that crown, would have had her more pinned as a self-proclaimed anti-feminist. So either I am missing something or saying "Ann Coulter is a feminist icon" is rather misleading.

Apart from their support groups, I don't think they have anything in common. Listen, that you read about Ann Coulter being a "feminist icon" is not my fault, it's just there. I wasn't even aware of it either, I haven't really kept in touch.

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Oh and re: that whole marriage thing, FYI rape inside the marriage was not a crime in sweden until the 1960's. So unless you consider roughly 50 years ago to be pre-historic times, marriage meant that you as a woman could not get raped by your husband. And by not get raped, I mean you could totally get raped it just wasn't illegal. Does that help put it into perspective a bit more?
Oh and I think it's good you don't call yourself a feminist, guest, because...well, you're not.

That may be, Kim... but it's not the key foundation of marriage, is it? It wasn't built on rape, was it? That Swedish law allowed for rape within the marriage, does not mean that marriage was a "[development] from rape as a practice." More importantly, in modern times, and she sure lived to see such times, rape is certainly not something you associate with marriage. So her pretend argument was a non-sequitur as well. And thanks for that last quip._________________"Apparently so. But suppose you throw a coin enough times, suppose one day. . . it lands on its edge."
--Amy Hennig, Soul Reaver 2

Uh huh, and considering that we've lived in essentially patriarchal societies all our lives, there's no way of knowing. So that kind of philosophical argument is totally pointless. The "what if..." scenario.

It's not that the patriarchy makes it impossible to think or ~~imagine~~ other possible societies. Sure we can know. We have to identify some biases first, but sure we can. That's what we're doing right now. And how is this argument pointless? If it's possible to get rid of the patriarchy, then it's possible to form theories on how another system would work.

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Her "argument" is an unfounded assertion, with no proof to support it. She might as well say that breaking "the patriarchy" will cause the earth to split open, revealing a crust of fireworks and justice.

Uh, I think there's a pretty clear theory behind all this - which I've been explaining to you. You can't dismiss her because she can't prove it - because there's no way she can. This isn't an exact science, she can't just replicate this in a lab.

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Look, Willem. I realise you're one to support feminism and I respect that. I just don't personally respect the term 'feminism' anymore. Especially if it's equipped by snakes like Coulter. By calling myself a humanist, I'm just cutting out the middle man.

Why don't you respect the term 'feminism' anymore? Any reason aside from generalising? Stop bringing up Coulter if you can't answer my previous question about her.

Here's a blog or two on why you should be a feminist and why it's different than being a humanist. I'm a lot more radical than these two blogs, but it's a start.

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You need to understand that everything isn't as black and white as you want it to be, and you need to understand that speaking of someone individually does not slander something collectively. My dislike for Dworkin is for her words and her actions, regardless of her feminism. That the feminism should be a smokescreen for her rhetoric is regretable, but they're there, in print.

I'm not even specifically defending Dworkin wrt this, I'm saying that you should never - ever - use the word 'misandry' in a conversation about feminism. Don't.

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When? When is she saying that? In that quote? No? Entirely different than what I think she's saying in that quote where she's saying it? Where are you getting these interpretations from?

I know English isn't your first language, but it not mine is eithor so you don't get to use that excuse. The quote again:

“Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist often bothers to buy a bottle of wine.”

I can't even explain this because it's right there in the words that are written. Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. The tactics of seduction are often difficult to distinguish from those used by rapists. It's. Right. There.

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Ah huh, but I believe she said marriage "developed from rape as a practice" - there is no basis for that in history. There is no evidence for her assertions, yet you can "see where she's coming from?" *facepalm* I think I'm going to have a fucking meltdown.

Actually, there were plenty of societies where if you raped a woman, you're forced to marry her. It's in the Bible, even. And I referenced those myths (based on actual practices) in my last post. I can she where she's coming from in that while she's coming off a bit strong (which is what happens with quotes), she's fundamentally correct in saying that marriage has been a tool of oppression. You said you had no idea what you're talking about in your last post and I actually am a historian, so maybe you should just drop this?

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No, because that's not actually what she's saying with that quote. Did Dworkin use 'manhood' a lot to mean 'the patriarchy', and did she use 'feminity' or 'ravaged feminity' often to mean the opposite? Oh, and you're 'guessing'? I thought you knew what you were talking about.

I don't have to know what one specific author has to say about one specific subject, if I know a lot about the subject itself, you ignorant little shit. Do I really need to be a Dworkin expert before you'll listen to my interpretation? Isn't it enough to just know a lot about feminism? Especially when you know jack shit about either?

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Well, that's just it. Interpretation. Your interpretation doesn't exist in the original quote. I've seen this kind of tactic before, from religious followers. But I believe you called them 'dull apologists' so colour me surprised.

It's like I'm talking to a particularly stupid wall. A quote on its own is meaningless without interpretation. When you read that quote, you interpreted it. I put forward that you misinterpreted it and gave you an alternative. What you're doing now is refusing to answer any questions because you can't even grasp the most basic of concepts of the debate. Please fix this.

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Acknowledge their existence. That they're there. That they are present and doing something to further 'the cause', even if they're doing it the wrong way. Even if you disagree.

And what does it matter if they are? Their actions and their words don't reflect upon the movement as a whole. (and you still haven't backed up that Coulter thing btw) You are making zero sense. I acknowledge there are feminists groups that I disagree with, how does this mean that we shouldn't use the word feminism anymore?

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They're not, but neither were yours. Humanism because I'm ignorant or showing my manly privilege? That is one of the most stupidest things I have ever heard/read.

It's because you're too ignorant to know what it means. You're kinda stuck, I guess, because rehashing the same shit over and over again with someone too stupid and too stubborn to learn is getting mighty tiring for me.

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Listen, that you read about Ann Coulter being a "feminist icon" is not my fault, it's just there. I wasn't even aware of it either, I haven't really kept in touch.

YES IT FUCKING IS YOUR FAULT BECAUSE YOU BROUGHT IT INTO THIS CONVERSATION AND YOU HAVEN'T BACKED IT UP AT ANY POINT YOU USELESS PIECE OF SHIT

please fucking die in a ditch, guest_________________attitude of a street punk, only cutting selected words out of context to get onself excuse to let one's dirty mouth loose

Guest, the degree to which you frequently have no clue exactly how you are acting is what turns you round the bend from exasperating into the incredibly surreal. I forget whatever the hell it was was being talked about the last time I really legitimately tried to argue with you in good faith but by that time your habits were notorious enough and repetitious enough that I prefaced it by saying that I knew I was probably just walking into a very predictable trap. You proceeded to act the pitch-perfect image of dunning-kruger and, no matter what you thought you were doing with your whinging, showed that it is easy and perhaps entirely fair to dismiss you as an unwittingly comic act. You have no idea what you are doing, and you persist in a displaced sense of arrogance and confidence as though you are doing nothing which has consistently earned you this reputation of yours. This is what is going on and I do not have any other way to try to help encourage change but for what it is worth even as I rightfully mock you for being a bizarre and clueless gorm who cannot make a fool of himself in oft-righteous button issue conversations, it would be nice if you were moving beyond being like how you are now and it would be something I can only encourage.

_________________attitude of a street punk, only cutting selected words out of context to get onself excuse to let one's dirty mouth loose

Apart from their support groups, I don't think they have anything in common. Listen, that you read about Ann Coulter being a "feminist icon" is not my fault, it's just there. I wasn't even aware of it either, I haven't really kept in touch.

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Oh and re: that whole marriage thing, FYI rape inside the marriage was not a crime in sweden until the 1960's. So unless you consider roughly 50 years ago to be pre-historic times, marriage meant that you as a woman could not get raped by your husband. And by not get raped, I mean you could totally get raped it just wasn't illegal. Does that help put it into perspective a bit more?
Oh and I think it's good you don't call yourself a feminist, guest, because...well, you're not.

That may be, Kim... but it's not the key foundation of marriage, is it? It wasn't built on rape, was it? That Swedish law allowed for rape within the marriage, does not mean that marriage was a "[development] from rape as a practice." More importantly, in modern times, and she sure lived to see such times, rape is certainly not something you associate with marriage. So her pretend argument was a non-sequitur as well. And thanks for that last quip.

I think using Coulter as an example of how feminism as a term has been "hijacked" is a dubious argument to make, Linus. Unless you are saying that Ann Coulter calling herself a feminist is hijacking of the term, but that's not really what you're saying you're trying to use Coulter as some kind of general example of feminism. Also given that it's a bit hard to understand what you mean by feminism, how has it been hijacked and what was it like before it was hijacked?

Well do you consider your grandparents to have lived in modern times or not? Or rather is everything pre-1965 (and sweden was relatively pioneering in this) ancient history? To be clear, I am pretty certain the law specifically stated it was not a crime as opposed to there simply being no legislation for it. Further more much rape is still committed by husbands, boyfriends and exes, indeed most statistics suggest that these are the more common forms of rape. Furthermore, in biblical law, the book or whatever is irrelevant, states that a victim of rape may forced to marry her rapist. And this is not about "oh look at that crazy bible" it is about the origin of marriage._________________A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Last edited by Him on Tue May 15, 2012 6:58 pm; edited 1 time in total

I'm interested in your response to my objections to marginalizing the term "feminist", Guest. Perhaps you missed it? Is pent a good chunk of the morning writing it in the hopes of making myself clear and explaining why so many people are upset when you deny being a feminist and instead use the term humanist.

I think of the thought as extremely liberating, actually. If everything is influenced by such structures, that means that if we identify them, we can change them. You can't change god, but you can change society. And maybe we don't know what we want - or better, we can't know for certain what we want - that shouldn't stop us from trying to improve the world.

Oh, I like your impression much better. I'm not sure if that is what Dworkin originally intended, but it is much better than how I originally interpreted it.

Willem wrote:

There is no reality other than this, so why not just run with it and do your best?

This just makes me smile. I want to underline it and circle it and put little red arrows pointing towards it. A long time ago I had a thought very similar and I've tried to build myself around it.

It makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to give people the message that we can't change. We can change. We ARE society (which makes this admittedly better than saying everything is in God's hands, at least). Yes, society does effect us in a very profound way... but it seems a bit defeatist to say nobody ever knows what they want. Like it's a negative message when we could be making a positive one instead.

Willem said this really well, but I think it's also important to point out that you don't have to feel like all the sex you have is rape to recognize the influence of social values on your decision to have sex. I think it would be counterproductive to suggest, for instance, that everyone stop having sex until we become totally equal. The species would die out before we got there. But it's an interesting thought exercise that allows you to evaluate why you're expected to offer sex in certain situations (birthdays, third dates, etc), and why men are expected to want it, and how do those expectations influence our behavior? If I'd never heard that the average couple has sex on the third date, how would my expectations on the third date be different, and how do those expectations influence the behavior of me and my date? I might still have sex on the third date, and that's fine, but recognizing the social influence allows me to examine motivations and behavior to make sure it's what I want and not just what's expected of me. Or, to try, anyway. But every time you do it, you get better at it (the thought exercise, not the sex)._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. I’ll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Guest, sorry that I yelled at you, but you are an incredibly frustrating person to talk to._________________attitude of a street punk, only cutting selected words out of context to get onself excuse to let one's dirty mouth loose

It makes me uncomfortable because I don't want to give people the message that we can't change. We can change. We ARE society (which makes this admittedly better than saying everything is in God's hands, at least). Yes, society does effect us in a very profound way... but it seems a bit defeatist to say nobody ever knows what they want. Like it's a negative message when we could be making a positive one instead.

Willem said this really well, but I think it's also important to point out that you don't have to feel like all the sex you have is rape to recognize the influence of social values on your decision to have sex.

Oh. Oh! Well, you've effectively pinpointed a huge part of what was making me uncomfortable. I honestly don't think of the sex or sex-like things I've had/done as rape. I don't LIKE to think of it as rape, that's for damned sure. A pretty significant proportion was coerced, though. Like, I remember the thought process involved in giving in and it still makes my skin crawl. (And as an important aside, I don't blame all the guys this happened with, or even most of them. I do blame one, but that is a personal story that does not need to be told today.) We all already know I'm kind of messed up in this regard, so I guess it really does make a lot of sense that such evocative phrasing would give me a strong reaction even when it's talked about in a strictly theoretical way. I suppose that's the point, ultimately.

Dogen wrote:

I think it would be counterproductive to suggest, for instance, that everyone stop having sex until we become totally equal. The species would die out before we got there. But it's an interesting thought exercise that allows you to evaluate why you're expected to offer sex in certain situations (birthdays, third dates, etc), and why men are expected to want it, and how do those expectations influence our behavior? If I'd never heard that the average couple has sex on the third date, how would my expectations on the third date be different, and how do those expectations influence the behavior of me and my date? I might still have sex on the third date, and that's fine, but recognizing the social influence allows me to examine motivations and behavior to make sure it's what I want and not just what's expected of me. Or, to try, anyway. But every time you do it, you get better at it (the thought exercise, not the sex).

I definitely agree with all of this. It is completely impossible for me not to think about it on a personal level especially now that I have a firmer grasp on what exactly it was that made me feel uncomfortable. I suspect it is something that will always make me uncomfortable to some extent. Exploring it is important, though. Understanding is the goal. Which is basically just rephrasing what you said, lol.

Edit: I phrased part of this to imply all the wrong things. Fixed now.

I'm interested in your response to my objections to marginalizing the term "feminist", Guest. Perhaps you missed it? Is pent a good chunk of the morning writing it in the hopes of making myself clear and explaining why so many people are upset when you deny being a feminist and instead use the term humanist.

Also, this article does a pretty good job of elaborating the whole humanist thing, especially in the last couple of paragraphs.

Much thanks to jwing, I've basically fallen in love with the Shakesville website in general. She makes some really interesting points.

When did I say that one group discredit the entire movement? Are you using the same rhetoric as Dennis now? Broad statements to something I definitely did not say? I said that people like Dworkin and Coulter has/had large followings, who are particularly vocal, and as such hijacked the name. And not just Dworkin and Coulter, others too. I didn't say they discredited the movement as a whole, I merely said that because of these people feminism may not be a word for which some people see favourably. So, I just say I'm a humanist now. No confusion there.

You said that feminism was hijacked, which is utter bullshit. Dworkin and Coulter make up tiny bits of the feminism spectrum. I'm also not buying the whole 'tainted term' thing, because you can hop from name to name like a coward but the connotation will always follow you. If you actually care about feminist goals, you should proudly call yourself a feminist and not buckle the second someone says 'but look at Coulter!'. It's the same as someone going 'but Stalin!' in a conversation about socialism and it's equally stupid.

it's stupid, but a lot of people do it, and it's a problem. i have to say that in the u.s. at least, i do think the word 'feminism' has been tainted. which i deeply deplore, and fight - but the fact is, the fight does have to be made. this is why one hears women say "i'm not a feminist, but i believe...." and then list out all the things feminists are fighting for. as you say, it is exactly like the knee-jerk reaction of communism=stalinism - and it makes it equally hard to discuss either subject, because you end up spending the first half of the argument pointing out all the ways that stalin was not acting in accordance with the theories of marx and engles, with digressions into things like the history of secret police in russia starting with ivan the terrible.

as has perhaps become apparent on this forum - a lot of people really don't understand what feminism is. i was not particularly aware of dworkin, so i can't say to what extent she is responsible for this. but people who get a lot of publicity do tend to be the ones who shape perceptions, rightly or wrongly. and just like the retractions papers print seem to get a lot less notice than the original errors, the people who jump up to say "no, feminists don't really hate all men, our much more nuanced view is..." don't seem to get their soundbites on the evening news to the extent that the original fire-eaters do.

i'm all in favor of educating people on what the ground truth is - but in part that's because i realize how ignorant most of them are._________________aka: neverscared!